


Properties of the Soul

by hyphyp



Category: James Bond (Craig movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon-Typical Violence, Ignores SPECTRE, M/M, brief mentions of abuse
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-12-23
Updated: 2016-01-18
Packaged: 2018-05-08 15:58:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 15,503
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5503877
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hyphyp/pseuds/hyphyp
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Q and Bond are soulmates, until the day Bond decides they're not.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Q’s mother told him something important when he was little, but he doesn’t remember it at all. 

He doesn’t remember his mother either, except as a vague person-shaped impression in everything from before he was five.  He remembers running on a grass lawn (the one in front of the manor, but he remembers even less about that than he does his mother) and stepping on a bee.  He remembers screaming, but not feeling pain.  Then he’s sitting on the edge of the bathroom sink and someone is holding his foot by the ankle, using a pair of thin metal tweezers to pull the bee’s stinger out.  The only clear image he has is of the tweezers, of the way they shone in the bright light, something his senses were all screaming was too sharp and ominous to be so near his foot.  The rest is just knowledge that his brain can’t put into shapes.  It’s like a paint-by-numbers kit with none of the colors filled in.  Here is where Q’s mother’s hands would have been; here, her body.

The mother Q doesn’t remember was tall and pale with large brown eyes and a large nose.  She wore thick glasses which made her nose look even bigger.   She did it on purpose because she thought her nose was pretty and that it had been made large especially because it was her finest feature.  Her soul mark – Q’s father’s name – was on the inside of her left wrist, and after she had finished dabbing antiseptic on Q’s foot, she pulled him into her lap and showed it to him (though he does not remember this at all).

“Do you know what this is?” she asked.

“It’s a soul mark,” Q replied at once, because even by four he’d already learned a large number of things.

“Right,” his mother said.  “Do you know why people have soul marks?”

“So they can find their soulmates.”

“And do you know what a soulmate is?”

Q paused, confused, and then said, “It’s your other person.”

“Hmm,” his mother said.  “It’s complicated, isn’t it?”  She kissed his head through his thick, dark curls.  “I want you to make me a promise, sweetheart.  One day you’re going to get your soul mark, and you’re going to want to be with that person very much, but you need to be careful.  That person might hurt you, and you have to promise me that if they do you’ll leave right away.  No one is allowed to hurt you, not even if their name is on your skin.”

“Why would they hurt me?” he asked.  “Soulmates are supposed to love each other.  Nanny said so.”

“They are,” she agreed.  “But adults are funny.  We do a lot of things that are difficult to understand.  And sometimes love’s not enough.”  Her grip on him tightened.  “Promise me, sweetheart.”

“I promise,” he said.

But Q doesn’t remember his mother, and he doesn’t remember anything she ever said to him let alone anything he said in reply.  He remembers being put into a tie and a stiff-collared shirt by the nanny, whose fingers trembled the whole time – it’s odd, remembering his nanny’s shaking hands but not his mother’s as they touched his foot and held the tweezers.  He remembers the police coming and parking out on the drive, the lights on the car flashing but silent.  An officer showed him his badge and asked him a lot of questions and told him that everything would be alright, but that’s all mostly a blur. 

The clearest memory Q has of his life before the foster system is of being put in a car with a small bag filled with some of his things.  In the moment after the social worker closed the car door next to him and before she opened the one on the driver’s side, he remembers the sudden sensation of feeling utterly on his own.  It was like he was cut off from the whole rest of the world.  Isolated, contained, alone.

That feeling never really went away.

 

\--

 

Q gets his mark a few days after his thirteenth birthday.  He notices it in the shower – a black smudge on the inside of his left thigh – and collapses into the shower basin like a folding chair snapping shut.  The water goes from hot to cold pounding down on him but he doesn’t move for what feels like forever, just running his fingers reverently over the crisp block letters.  He can hardly believe it’s real.

“James Bond,” he reads aloud, and then says it again and again and again.

Q gets out of the shower and dries off.  He goes to the room he shares with two other boys and blocks the door shut with a chair (they’ll be mad at him later but he doesn’t much care) and cries, grasping his thigh and rocking back and forth on the verge of panic or something very near to it.

Later that day, he gets in a fist fight with one of the boys over the barricaded door, but he fights back harder than he ever has before.  He gives as good as he gets.  He gives the other boy a bite on his arm so deep he has to have it stitched up.  The other children in the group home eye Q warily, like a dog once tame turned rabid. 

Q can’t deny he’s got the taste for blood in him now.  It’s James Bond that’s put the power in him, the diseased will to live.  Years later, he thinks fondly of this moment.  He thinks of it as proof that everything Bond touches either dies or gets stronger.

 

\--

 

James Bond turns out to be a difficult man to find.  Q searches for him in every place he can think of – birth registries, newspaper archives, school records, family trees, the foster system – and comes up with nothing.  He expands his search beyond the UK and returns just as empty handed.  There are a few dead James Bonds here and there, but they all passed away generations ago, and there has yet to be a verifiable case of a soulmate being born after their partner has already died.  (Q considers the possibility he may be a first, an exception, but rejects the idea purely out of self-preservation.)

From there, Q determines the need to pursue less legal veins of inquiry.  He starts hacking.  But James Bond isn’t behind any of the locked doors Q jimmies, either, and Q comes to accept that there is something decidedly off about his soulmate.  He’s been erased.  Maybe he’s been hidden or maybe he’s hiding on purpose.  From Q?  Or from someone else?  There’s no trace, and no explanation.

At some point, the hacking stops being a means to an end, and starts being its own kind of joy.  He dives in and doesn’t bother coming back up for air.  Everything else slips away.  Sometimes, for a moment, even thoughts of James Bond retreat.  But late at night (early in the morning) when his programs are all running diligently without him and the tiredness of several days without sleep starts settling into his skin, Q sits and wonders what kind of man James Bond is.  He’s a secret, but what kind?  He runs his fingers along the mark on his thigh and smiles to himself.  James Bond really is a gift.  A puzzle box with a prize inside.  Q isn’t discouraged.  He’s elated.

 

\--

 

Years pass. Q emancipates himself from the foster system (illegally) and gets a job as a cashier at a Tesco, but quickly decides that socially acceptable methods of making money are slow and boring.  He starts using his hacking skills to skim some fat off the top of rich tossers’ bank accounts, a few pounds here and there that ends up amounting to a large, solid sum.  He lives a moderately comfortable lifestyle in a small flat in London where he spends almost all his time looking for James Bond. 

And then several things happen in very quick succession.

First, Q finds a mention of a ‘Bond’ in a highly classified, mostly redacted file in an email to the Commissioner of the Met from MI6.  Second, the circle of multinational hackers he’s been working with on and off over the past few years comes under investigation by the CIA (for entirely deserved reasons).  Third, Q’s father finally does the world a favor and croaks, leaving Q with a large inheritance and a sudden lack of interest in theft.  Q makes a deal, turns on his fellow hackers without so much as batting an eyelash, and begins working with the cyber crimes division of the CIA. 

This, unfortunately, requires a move from London to Langley, Virginia, but Q can feel himself inching closer to James Bond with every moment.  The CIA and MI6 cooperate, although they are hardly privy to each other’s classified files, and Q knows it’s only a matter of time before an opportunity presents itself.  He’s proven himself smart enough; now he just has to be patient.

He begins work at the CIA without much interest but becomes unexpectedly invested.  He’s only ever worked as a black hat before, but now he’s on the other side of the fence and it’s exhilarating.  Q finds himself repelling more attacks in a single month than he has in his entire previous career.  Soon he’s developing new security systems, improving what others considered un-improvable, and inventing much more from scratch. 

The inventions don’t stop at computer programming, either.

The CIA’s cyber crimes division is the kind of mish-mash inevitable of bureaucracy anywhere – its offices and employees are shared by R&D, and there are days when it’s unclear who is supposed to be doing what or reporting to whom.  At first Q merely watches with interest, leaning over the railing to the lab on his infrequent breaks to examine the swift, careful hands of those working below.  It’s always noisy down there, a mixture of cursing and mechanical sounds and fast-paced conversation, but it’s a soothing kind of noise that speaks to Q like the humming of a computer.  A year in, one of the strictly R&D guys approaches Q while he’s on break, watching, and gives him a knowing look.

“You know anything about engineering?” he asks.

“Only theoretically,” Q hums.

“Would you like to try turning theory into practice?”

The R&D guy is named Fred Clay and he teaches Q not only how to manipulate metal, but how to manipulate flesh as well.  One afternoon, they get supremely drunk, watch about a dozen episodes of Speed Racer, modify a classic corvette to drop tire spikes at the press of a button, and have sex on the bonnet like teenagers.

Q may be obsessed with James Bond, with the idea of having a soulmate, but he’s never been a romantic.  He needs Bond like he needs his own hands, can feel the pull of desire constantly in the back of his head, but he’s not like those people who stay celibate their whole lives, waiting.  Those sorts are rare, anyway.  You can love someone who isn’t your soulmate and plenty do.  Some even marry people outside their bond.  Q knows that will never be him, but that doesn’t prevent him from messing around with Clay in the meantime.

One night, lying in bed, they talk about soulmates.

“Mine died when I was in college,” Clay admits.  “We never even met.”

Q turns over to stare at him, horrified.  The idea has always scared him shitless.  To be having breakfast one day or walking down the street and just feel the bond snap.  Even if you’ve met your soulmate, losing them is supposed to be the worst thing imaginable.  The pain is unbearable, like having your guts pulled out through your throat.  Some people never recover.

Clay unwraps the bandage he keeps around his ankle and shows Q the faded letters – Maria Talbot.  Clay strokes the mark with incredible gentleness, like touching too hard might make it disappear.

“I passed out in the middle of class and woke up in a hospital,” Clay says.  “Her parents were there.  They wanted to meet me and tell me about her but I couldn’t take it.”  He pauses and stares into space, clearly in the midst of remembering.  “We’re on good terms now.  I go over for dinner from time to time.”

Clay doesn’t talk about Maria much more than that, not about how she died nor who she was, and Q is more grateful than curious.  He talks about his own instead.

“If I’d never gotten my mark,” he confesses, “I think I’d have died before now.  If he dies before we meet…”  Something lodges itself in his throat and the words can’t seem to worm their way past.

“You’d be okay,” Clay says confidently.  “I know you.  You’re the strongest person I’ve ever met.  But I hope you never have to learn it the hard way.”

The next year the CIA runs a mission in Montenegro where Felix Leiter crosses paths with an MI6 agent named James Bond.  Clay turns up on Q’s doorstep that night with a huge smile and a bottle of champagne.

 

\--

 

The CIA is extremely reluctant to let Q go, particularly into the hands of another international intelligence organization.  They pull a number of dirty tricks, including threatening to renege on their deal and have Q tried with criminal charges.  Nearly six months pass before he’s begrudgingly released, and then MI6 gives him another six of low-clearance training while they attempt to determine whether or not he’s a CIA plant.  Q nearly goes mad with boredom, particularly since he has be on best behavior until the scrutinizing gaze of his new employers is off his back.  But then he passes inspection and is permitted into Q branch and a rush of information about James Bond descends.

When Q isn’t working, he reads anything about James Bond he can get his hands on.  Much of it, like the initial file he found ‘Bond’ in all those years ago, has been redacted to the point of uselessness.  But there are snippets here and there – an exasperating number of reports about equipment damage, expense reports that would make tax payers’ hair curl, medical evaluations that make Q’s brow furrow with worry, and throwaway lines like “…retrieved by J.B. C.N. 007 on 5.10.11 from Mumbai (See CF#11007013020).”  These almost always refer to files that don’t appear to actually exist.

There are a few photographs, all of them better than the blurred surveillance footage from the CIA.  Q spends one afternoon staring reverently at James Bond’s face, serious and focused and more handsome than Q could have ever dreamed.  His eyes are the most incredible blue.  Q has always theoretically loved James Bond, but now, at twenty-six years old, twice the age he was when his mark first appeared, he feels himself really falling.

 

\--

 

Just as Q is working his way up to seeking Bond out, though, the man goes and gets himself shot off a train and declared dead.

At first Q panics, waiting for the inevitable pain to come, but it never does.  Bond is still alive.  Q thinks about saying something to someone, but the more time passes, the less willing he is to come forward.  Maybe Bond wants it to be this way, to stay dead in MI6’s records.  It’s not like he has much of a chance for any other kind of retirement.

Q is frustrated, of course.  It feels like every time he gets close to Bond, he finds himself thwarted, another hurdle thrown in his path.  He thinks about quitting MI6, decides he likes his job too much and that the resources he has in his current position are too precious to waste, and stays put.  Every moment he isn’t working or sleeping, though, he’s searching for Bond.

It doesn’t matter in the end, because MI6 gets blown to hell, Q becomes Q, and Bond comes back before Q ever gets even a hint of where he’s been.

 

\--

 

So it comes to pass that Q stands in the threshold between rooms in the National Gallery and sees his soulmate in profile for the very first time.  It’s just about the worst timing ever, he thinks.  World’s ending, or might as well be for MI6, and all he wants to do is walk over there and blurt it all out.  No time, though.  Job to do.  When it’s all over, he promises himself.

Still, he’s running high on adrenaline and something like pure, unfiltered sunlight when he sinks down onto the bench besides James Bond, feeling the warmth radiating off of him like a heater.

He can’t resist teasing.

Bond seems annoyed at first, but soon his lips are turning up into the barest hints of a smile and he’s reassessing Q, examining him.  They shake hands and when Q says, “double-oh seven,” he’s really saying, “I love you, you idiot.”

There’s no time now.  Job to do.  Lives to save.  Triggers to pull (and not pull).  But Q’s whole world is a kaleidoscope of James Bond At Last.

 

\--

 

Perhaps predictably, it all goes to shit very quickly from there.

 

\--

 

When it’s over, Bond disappears for a month and Q pretends not to worry.  He busies himself with checking and rechecking the new firewalls, obsessing over even the smallest of things until the system is flawless.  After that, he dives into the mangled ruins of the Aston Martin. 

It’s not Bond, but it is him, a little bit.  Q treats every part like a bone from Bond’s body.  He eases wires and tubes into place like he’s arranging veins back under the skin.  Every surface is armor that must protect flesh.  Every nut, every bolt is a tooth.  He adds things as well, of course, including a nasty surprise for anyone who tries to blow it up a second time.  Never again, he thinks as he works.  Not while I can still use a computer or turn a wrench.

Bond comes back before the car is finished, but he lights up when he sees it even in its mostly dismantled state.

“You and me, old girl,” he says, patting the bonnet affectionately.

“Do be careful,” Q says distractedly from over the top of the monitor he’s focused on.  “It bites back now.”

Bond’s grin is wicked.  Q focuses in on him.

“In the future, you might want to take it easy when parallel parking,” Q says vaguely.

“I thought you said Q branch didn’t go in for that sort of thing anymore,” Bond says.

“Exploding pens, double-oh seven,” Q says.  “We don’t do exploding pens.  Cars, however, are a completely separate matter.”  He pulls a metal case out from under his desk and pushes it toward Bond.  “Now, about your new gun.”

 

\--

 

Q wants to tell Bond, he really does, but things keep getting in the way – missions and projects and interns who nearly kill themselves with explosives or poison depending on what day of the week it is.  Bond is rarely around, anyway, and when he is they don’t have time to do much more than swap barbless insults.  He seems to linger a little while longer with each mission, though, even when Q is scolding him for losing and breaking equipment.  He merely stands there, hands in his pockets, grinning and giving as good as he gets.  Q is reluctant to see him go every time.

I could fall in love with you all on my own, he thinks.  No soul mark necessary.

Moneypenny, who has become Q’s closest friend both by sheer compatibility and the natural isolation of the job, says they’re both shameless flirts and that they ought to stop tugging on each other’s pigtails.

“What would your soulmate think, Q?” she asks in mock-seriousness.

Q nearly laughs at loud.

“I’m sure I have no idea,” he says.

 

\--

 

1)

“Gun and a radio, again?” Bond asks as Q picks up a small metal case and places it on the desk between them.  “Do me a favor and throw in a box of matches this time, if the budget can spare it.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Q says.  “You’re going to Cuba.  They’ll have plenty of matches.”  He pops the case open and pulls out the expected radio and gun as well as a watch.  “The watch is also a rebreather.  You activate it by pressing this dial on the side like so and –” The back extends out to reveal a mouthpiece.  At the same time, the metal wristband straightens out.  “There’s a tenth of a liter of air in the wristband.  Of course, it also functions perfectly well as a waterproof time piece.  Have fun swimming.  Watch out for sharks.”

Bond examines the watch intently.  “Funny,” he says.  “I don’t recognize it.  What brand did you say it was again?”

“I didn’t because it’s not,” Q says.  “That’s a Q branch watch.  It’s easier and cheaper to build from scratch than to go fiddling around with those ungodly expensive things you like to wear.”

“You made this?”  He sounds impressed.

“No, of course I didn’t,” Q scoffs.  “Do I look like I know the first thing about clockwork?  It’s tedious and the results are boring.”  He looks up at Bond with narrowed eyes.  “Honestly, Bond, you didn’t think I made everything, did you?  Q branch has more than one member for a reason, and it’s not because I wasn’t born with enough arms.”

“I suppose it never occurred to me,” Bond says, looking back over the room where a dozen or so men and women in white coats are working with obvious concentration on computers and at their lab spaces.

Q rolls his eyes.

“Take it as a compliment,” Bond says with a grin.

“It’s not a compliment,” Q says dryly.  “It only means you never spare a thought to where your tech comes from, as though it just pops out of the lab like little cakes from an easy-bake oven.  Which explains quite a lot, actually. Do you know, the things you destroy in less than a day in the field take at least –”

“Speaking of watches, if this one is to be trusted, I have a plane to catch.”

“– three months to – get back here, Bond!  Bond!”

 

 

2)

“Had a good time in Cuba, I see,” Q says, examining the massive bruise on Bond’s face.

“Delightful,” Bond says without a hint of irony. 

He sets the gun and radio down on the desk.  Q frowns.

“And where’s my watch?” he asks.

“Your watch?” Bond says.  “Weren’t you telling me that it’s a Q branch watch and you had nothing to do with it?”

Q holds out his hand expectantly, an unimpressed look on his face.

“Well, as it turns out…”

“Yes?”

“When you said ‘watch out for sharks’…”

“Ah.”

“Poor phrasing on your part, I think.”

Q sighs.  “Bond, you absolute prat.”

Bond doesn’t even have the decency to look guilty.  “I thought about getting you a box of cigars as compensation,” he says, “but I didn’t take you for the type to smoke.”

“Oh, well, it’s the thought that counts,” Q says sarcastically.

“In the end, I did bring you something, though,” Bond goes on.  “It’s a piece of technology I came across during the mission, and I thought you might like to have a look at it.”

At this, Q really does perk up.  He watches eagerly as Bond reaches into his pocket, taking out a small metal rectangle and placing it on the desk next to the radio.  Q stares at it.

“It’s called a cigarette lighter, I’m told.”

“Out,” Q snaps, pointing to the door.

“Maybe you could investigate the possibility of –”

“Out.”

“– making it a standard issue –”

“Out!”

 

 

3)

A lead about a ring of illegal arms dealers (they also seem to deal in exotic animals, but MI6 tends to be more interested in rocket launchers than tigers for some reason) in Ukraine has Q branch on edge for a week or two, flying blind as they try to find a way into one of the toughest security systems Q has seen in years without tipping off the whole organization.  As a result, he’s a little distracted when Bond comes by to pick up his kit for a basic recon mission in Morocco.  It’s a fairly simple job that probably not even double-oh seven could cock up so Q doesn’t put much thought into it, absently waving Bond away with his gun and radio.

“Oh, wait just a moment, Bond!” Q calls just as Bond is about to walk out the door.  “I’ve just remembered something else.”

Bond backtracks and watches Q shuffling through stacks of unorganized papers for a moment – and what’s the bloody point of having a fully digitized system if people are going to spend all day dumping novels on his desk anyway? – and then raises an eyebrow at the phone he’s offered.

“I have a mobile already,” Bond points out.  “And a radio.”

“This one’s not exactly a mobile,” Q says.  “You can make calls on it if absolutely necessary but mostly I just need you to carry it around in your pocket so it can gather some statistical information about field work.”

“Statistical information?” Bond asks.  “Like what?”

“Physical exertion, mostly.”

Bond’s lips twitch.

“Oh, not that kind you old lecher,” Q says, clicking his tongue impatiently.  “I don’t expect you to keep a phone on you while you’re ‘interrogating a witness’ or whatever it is the kids call it these days.”

“Sorry, am I an old lecher or a kid?”

“The body of the first, the maturity of the second.”  Q gestures to the phone’s case, pointing out something that looks a lot like a long electrical filament running along the edges.  “The case is nearly indestructible and it comes equipped with a taser which can be activated by using your actual phone – try not to get the two mixed up.  Basically, you have no excuse for not bringing this back in one piece.  I’m serious, Bond.  I need this data for a project I’m working on.”

“If you insist, Q,” Bond says, tucking the phone into a pocket inside his jacket.  “I’ll bring it back in pristine condition.  Scout’s honor.”

 

 

4)

Q sits back in his chair and stretches.  The arms dealer he’s been watching for the past few hours isn’t aware, but the series of unfortunate and seemingly coincidental accidents and electronic failures that have trapped him in Odessa and forced him to send an urgent email using the unsecured wi-fi of a local café were actually the carefully orchestrated cover Q needed to stroll into his phone and add a little something – call it a souvenir.  From there, breaching the rest of the network will be cake. 

He’s feeling rather smug about it, so of course Bond chooses that moment to appear like an omen in Q’s office doorway, a sad looking lump of metal in his hand.  He drops it unceremoniously onto Q’s desk where it thunks loudly and lays still, like a dead animal.

“What,” Q says tonelessly, “is that?”

“There was a bit of a situation in Algiers,” Bond says.

“What do you mean there was a situation in Algiers, you weren’t even in Algieria, you were in Morocco on a simple recon mission, and…” Q picks up the lump with a gentle grip.  “…and this is the ultra-durable phone I gave you _specifically_ so that you could return it to me.  Of course it is.”

“It still works.”

Q presses the barely intact button and watches as the mangled screen lights up, incapable of doing much more than glow and flicker.  Q sighs.

“I suppose if the data’s on here I should still be able to retrieve it,” Q says.  “Possibly with the help of a crowbar.”  Or an intern with a crowbar, anyway.  He looks up sharply.  “You didn’t answer my question – what were you doing with my expensive prototype technology in Algiers?”

“I needed to improvise an explosion and the remote activated taser proved essential,” Bond says.  “And I was in Algiers for extraction.”

“That’s a little far to go to for a plane ride home, don’t you think?” Q says sourly.

“Obviously it wasn’t far enough.”

Q glares up at Bond.  Bond’s lips quirk into a serene smile, not phased in the least.

“You know,” Bond begins, eyes gleaming, “I wouldn’t have needed to blow up your phone if you’d just provided me with some sort of small, portable explosive device in the first place.”

“Get out.”

“I’m just making a suggestion,” he continues, even as he starts back toward the door.  “You could conceal it somehow.  Maybe in a lipstick tube.”

“Get out of here, 007, before I throw this at you.”

“You’re right, the lipstick tube’s not practical – no one would ever believe I’d carry one.  Something along those lines, though, surely.  A cigar?  It’s a shame I didn’t bring any from Cuba after all.  Well, you’re the genius, Q.  You’ll figure it out.”

It’s only the phone’s contents and the fact that he isn’t sure it will survive a collision with a skull that thick that keeps Q from following through with his threat and lobbing it at Bond’s retreating head.  Also, his aim isn’t very good.

Q is, eventually, able to open the case of the phone enough to get at the miraculously intact micro SD card.  No crowbar (or intern) is required, but there is liberal use of a screwdriver and pliers involved.  Maybe next time he sends Bond out to gather statistical information, he’ll call it state secrets.  Bond tends to be a bit more careful with those, he’s noticed.

 

 

5)

“Right,” says Bond dubiously, looking down at the desk before him.  “Gun, radio, and…shoes.”

“Don’t worry, they’re a custom fit,” Q says.  “I didn’t try terribly hard to match your personal style, but they should pass as the kind of over-priced garbage you prefer.”  That’s a lie; he spent several days at the drafting table trying to match his design to the few pictures of Bond in the system that showed his feet.

“Is this another statistics-gathering thing?” Bond looks wary, like it hadn’t been him who intentionally blew up the last one.

“No, this is the results of the statistics-gathering ‘thing’, as you’ve so eloquently put it.  Dress shoes you can run in.”

“I’ve been running in dress shoes my whole life, Q,” Bond says, “and I’ve never had a problem before.”

“You’ll have fewer problems now.”

“Q,” Bond says sternly

“Bond,” Q replies in the same tone.

Bond sighs, but puts the shoes on.  He’d probably be happier about it, Q muses, if they had a retractable blade in the toe.  Or a shoe phone.  Ah, well.  Maybe next time.

 

 

6)

“Right,” Q says, “Gun and radio are in order.  Where are the shoes?” 

“On my feet.”

“Well, take them off and return them.”

“No.”

“No?”

“I outran a tiger in these shoes and it felt like I was taking a jog round the park.  I’m keeping them on.”

“I suppose that’s fine,” Q sniffs, as if it’s an imposition and he’s not getting sickening little butterflies of joy.  Then he frowns.  “You know, for all that MI6 worries more about the rocket launchers than the tigers, it never seems to be the former that make life difficult.”

Bond levels him with a look that says, very plainly, “You don’t know the half of it.”

 

\--

 

He does know the half of it, though.  And the whole of it, really.

Becoming Q has the added benefit of giving him access to a fair few of the redacted files concerning Bond.  Q finds their contents a mixture of hair-raising and ridiculous.  He’s not sure how much Bond has exaggerated and how much he’s downplayed, but he’s certain none of the reports are the unadulterated truth.

He sits in his apartment until early, early in the morning reading, drinking wine straight from the bottle and wincing at everything he’s missed.  He reads about Vesper Lynd, though her file is sadly thin and distant, like it was written about an object instead of a person.  There’s a photograph of her in Venice, before she died, with the wind blowing in her hair as she looks over her shoulder to smile at Bond.

Maybe Q should hate her, but instead he feels only a deep sadness.  He wishes he could have met the woman Bond had loved.  Were she and Q alike at all?  Would they have gotten along?  He has nothing to go off of except a couple dry paragraphs and the capital letters “DECEASED.”  Q takes a drink for Vesper.  He takes a drink for Bond’s heart.  Thank you for loving him in the mean time, he thinks.  I’ll take it from here.

Bond sleeps with a lot of people, both men and women, for work.  Q finds himself mainly amused by this, but it also makes him love Bond more, in a way.  The files other than Vesper’s are still distant, but far less so.  There’s a warmth about them and also a sadness.  Bond is a professional liar, a professional killer, but Q gets the impression that he gives his heart a little bit to everyone that asks for a piece, without ever seeming to run out.  He loves them and he loses them; he mourns and moves on.

But not from me, Q thinks, smiling.  No loss.  Never again.  Thank you all.  I’ll take it from here.

 

\--

 

Eventually, the Aston Martin reaches completion and Q resolves to tell Bond that they’re soulmates when he hands over the keys.  It feels a little bit like a proposal, but then, it sort of is.  He calls Bond down after he finishes his latest mission, when Q branch has emptied out for the evening, and offers him a celebratory glass of champagne.

“To hopeless old wrecks,” Q proposes, raising his glass toward Bond.

“To resurrection,” Bond counters, clinking their glasses together.

They both drink and Q starts explaining the modifications as Bond walks a loop around the car, examining it with a pleased expression on his face.

“The computer can do just about anything you could imagine needing to do,” Q finishes with pride.  “It’s no stand in for me or Q branch but it’s a very good attempt.  As a bonus, it can analyze most substances known to man, if you put a drop onto the pull out tray.  Don’t try it with anything corrosive, obviously, but poisons are fair game.  And we’re still a few years off from having a total DNA database, but it can tell you what species a sample comes from and whether that pig or human is a convicted felon, anyway.  No hair, though, so try for blood or saliva.”

“Or something else,” Bond says.

“If you want to walk around with an evidence bag full of cum and go flinging it about in your car, double-oh seven, that’s your prerogative,” Q says loftily.  “Speaking of which, the tray is self-cleaning, but we’ll be treating it as biohazardous waste each time you come back in and replace it.  We’ll also be doing regular replacements and tests of the first aid kit, so no more disconnecting defibrillators.” 

“You’re an angel, Q,” Bond says emphatically.

“Well you must have one looking after you somewhere, to have stayed alive this long,” Q says.  “Or, more likely, a devil.”

“Neither,” Bond insists, returning to stand next to Q.  “I’m just that good.”

“You’re impossible,” Q says.  “I wouldn’t be surprised if your soul mark turned out to be your own name.  With a heart around it.”  He takes a drink of his champagne to hide his eagerness.

“Hm,” Bond says.  “It wasn’t.”

Q pauses.

“Wasn’t?” Q asks, feigning disinterest.

Bond scratches his chin and sets his champagne down.  He seems suddenly fascinated with one of the dismantled car lights on the counter top, picking it up to examine the hinge mechanism.

“I had it removed,” he says, like it’s an aside.

Q blinks, not processing.  There’s a curious buzzing sound in his ears,  rushing, and it's making it difficult to hear.

“What,” he says at last.

“Don’t be shocked,” Bond says.  He sets down the light and gives a forced smile that looks more like a grimace.  “It’s done more commonly than you think.  Especially in this line of work.” 

“But.  Why.”

“Soulmates are a liability,” Bond says.

Q nods dully and drinks more champagne, because he must do something.

“I understand,” he lies, and is amazed at how calm he sounds.  “Still.  What about your soulmate?”

Bond sighs heavily.

“Listen, Q, I didn’t want to have to do this,” he says. 

He does Q the service, at least, of not looking away, though his face is filled with some emotion that makes it suddenly hideous to Q.  Pity, but not guilt.  Like he’s speaking to a naïve child, telling him St. Nick isn’t real and all our mummies and daddies die someday. 

“I thought we could be friends.”

Q downs the rest of his champagne and sets the glass heavily onto the counter next to Bond’s.  Both of them quiver a little under the force.

“You knew,” Q says.

“I looked you up while I was in Macau.”

“That long.  And you didn’t think to say anything.”

“Neither did you,” Bond points out.

“Well obviously I was planning to,” Q snaps.  “Obviously I was waiting for the right moment to – to humiliate myself, I see now.  Whereas you were just going to keep the fact that you don’t… _want me_ –”

“It’s not like that Q,” Bond says, looking pained.

“Then what is it like?” Q asks.  He hasn’t felt this panicked since he was a child, since he found the stupid fucking soul mark in the first place.  “What could it possibly be like?  I’m a liability?  I’ve never known you to shy away from liability when it comes attached to a nice pair of legs, Bond.”

“Oh, come off it, Q.”

“No, shut up.  It’s never bothered me before, not once.  But now here you are telling me you don’t want me, your _soulmate_ , because I’m a liability? Just last week you nearly blew a mission to shit because some fucking mob princess used her fucking vagina magic –”

“I knew exactly what I was doing,” Bond says, voice low.  “I did what was necessary to get the job done.  It was you lot up here sitting on your hands that nearly screwed me over.  You think just because you sit around watching me on a screen that you know the first thing –”

“What was necessary to get the job done?” Q scoffs.  “You went back for her.  You had everything you needed, extraction was waiting, but no.  You had to go back.  She fed you some sob story about daddy while lying in bed with you one night and suddenly she's more important than the millions of lives that were in immediate danger.  You nearly lost the data all over again in the process, and for what?”

“To save someone’s life!” Bond yells, slamming his hand down on the counter.  Q rears back in a flinch.  “She helped me and she was going to die for it, and you think I should have just left her there?  I got the data back!  I saved her life and those fucking millions and what do I get in return?  One month suspension from field work and a talking to from M, like I’m a naughty child being sent to stand in a corner and think about what I’ve done!  What is the point of this job, Quartermaster, if not to save innocent lives?”

“I wouldn’t have the first clue,” Q says icily.  “There was only one reason I ever joined MI6, and it had nothing to do with Queen and Country, I assure you.”

Bond nods slowly, barely repressed anger still visible in the tightness of his jaw and his flared nostrils.

“I see,” he says.  “The only reason you’re Q at all is because of me, is that it?”

“Yes, that’s it exactly.”

Bond straightens up and looks at the Aston Martin, sitting innocently in the corner like a child watching its parents have a domestic.  He turns back to Q and his expression is utterly blank, everything carefully locked away once more.

“Then you’re a lot more pathetic than I thought, Q,” he says.  “For the record, it has nothing to do with whether or not you’re a liability.  I just don’t want you.”

Bond turns and strides from the room, leaving the keys to the Aston Martin untouched on the wall.  Q waits for a moment, frozen in place and still reeling.  Then he spins on his heels and walks to the bathroom.  He throws up into the toilet until he’s dry heaving, choking on stale, acidic air and staring dizzily down at the contents of his own stomach.

What a waste of champagne, he thinks.

 

\--

 

Q resumes work, not bothering to go home that night.  He goes back through the surveillance footage of Q branch and replaces the past few hours with a loop of him working.  There’s no need for anyone else to see that disaster.  He wishes he could erase it from his own head, go on living in ignorance, pining after Bond like a love struck school boy but at least one with half a hope.  After that, he throws himself into coding so that he won’t have time to think.

And days pass like that.  For a while, nothing seems to change.  It’s almost like he really did erase it, like it never happened at all.  Then, almost out of nowhere, although he thinks it was probably building up to this inevitability, he finds himself overcome with the most excruciating pain he’s ever experienced in his life.  He passes out in an elevator on his way down to Q branch from the cafeteria.  Much later, he watches the surveillance footage with morbid curiosity, sees his body starting to seize.  It looks like there’s something inside of him shaking loose and trying desperately to rip its way out.

When he wakes up in medical, a sympathetic looking nurse tells him in a soft voice that he has the symptoms of a snapped bond, that there’s a near one hundred percent chance that his soulmate has died, and would they like him to find out? 

He tells her no, but demands his laptop and looks up Bond’s status the moment he’s left alone.  Bond is fine.  There’s live footage of him in M’s office, deep in conversation over a glass of scotch.  Oh, Q thinks numbly.  The bond’s not snapped.  It’s just been rejected.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've been going back and forth on whether or not to wait to post the first part of this, and I still don't feel like I've decided one way or another. At this point I just want it done... maybe that's a mistake, ha ha. The absolutely only thing I'm sure about in this is the inclusion of the phrase 'fucking vagina magic.' (It's really the little things in life.) Let me know what you think.


	2. Chapter 2

Moneypenny arrives in medical a few hours after Q wakes and gives him such a pitying look that he has to strain to keep from grimacing.  He wonders what he must look like, lying there in bed.  Small, he thinks.  A little boat suddenly cut loose and left to bang about on the rocks.

“Oh, Q,” she says embracing him tightly, “I’m so sorry.”

“Not your fault,” he mumbles into her shoulder.

“Do you know who it was?” she asks as she pulls back.  “The doctor said you refused to have your mark examined.”

“It’s in a rather intimate place,” he says, as if that’s an explanation.

“But do you _know_?” Moneypenny presses.

“I know,” Q says quietly.

Moneypenny doesn’t cry, but Q wishes she would.  She could get it out of the way, for the two of them.  Instead, she sits on the edge of his bed and holds his hand, not speaking, just sitting.  Q examines her sturdy frame and wishes briefly that it could have been her.  He imagines the two of them together.  It’s weird, sort of off, but they would have made it work.  Best friends, if nothing else.

But Q can’t control the universe.  Nobody can do that, no matter how hard Bond might try.  It’s spitting into the wind.  So he holds Moneypenny’s hand and resists the urge to feel resentful.

 

\--

 

Q thinks about Clay for the first time in a long time.  He considers calling him or writing him an email but decides not to.  He doesn’t want to seem like he’s looking for a rebound.  But he thinks about Maria Talbot and the bandage around Clay’s ankle and the tender way he touched that name, even so long after having lost her.  He wants to know if there’s any hope of moving on, if he’ll ever manage to stand steadily in the same room as the man who rejected him, if he’ll feel this pain again, later, when Bond really does die.  But Clay doesn’t have those answers.  He wonders if anyone does.

Q briefly considers following Bond’s lead and having the mark removed, but he knows he never could.  The mark saved Q’s life, even if it hadn’t meant much else, in the end.

He thinks about what Clay said, also, about Q being strong, and he wonders if that’s true.  He feels exceptionally frail.  Then he’s released from medical and psych clears him to return to work almost right away.  There’s a near constant twinge of numbness in his chest and thigh, but he compartmentalizes it to the point that he rarely notices at all, except when he takes his glasses off at night and attempts to fall asleep.

But Q doesn’t think this is strength.  This is just what a survivor does – he survives.  And Q has always been a survivor, long before the name James Bond showed up on his skin.  He’ll still be one from now on, with those letters dulled down to a barely visible gray.

 

\--

 

Q does what Q does.  He researches, rationalizes, attempts to strip it of emotion and turn it into numbers

Bond is right.  Soul mark removal is more common than most people think.  Sometimes people get their marks removed after their soulmate has died, and sometimes they do it when they decide to commit to a relationship outside their bond.  Not once, though, in all that Q digs up, does it say what happens to the person whose name is removed.

Maybe it’s rare that they find out.  More likely, they can never bring themselves to admit it.  Who would freely advertise that?  That they’ve been rejected by their soulmate, the one person the universe dictates absolutely must love them?  It’s more than humiliating.  They probably end up like Q, experiencing the symptoms of a snapped bond and then just going along with it when everyone assumes their soulmate must be dead.  What else could you do?

He wonders if there’s a way to find others like him, but decides he doesn’t want to know them.  He doesn’t want to expose himself as insufficient and he doesn’t want to measure himself against other castoffs.  Maybe isolation is bad for his mental health, but it’s better for what little remains of his pride.

The process itself is surprisingly simple, Q finds out.  It’s not like tattoo removal, that’s a misconception.  Instead, a cocktail of hormones is injected into the skin where the mark is, causing it to fade to nothingness in a matter of hours.  Studies are still being done on the relationship between the mark and the bond itself but most scientists agree that those who have their mark removed lose all connection to their soulmate.

Soul mark removal is, in all cases, permanent.

 

\--

 

Time passes.  It does not, as it turns out, heal all things.

Q tries not to act differently, but whatever burgeoning friendship he had with Bond has been decimated.  They no longer chat and avoid each other completely when at all possible.  Bond has taken to dumping his kit on return into the hands of the nearest intern and then leaving before anyone can even get a word in.  People notice, of course, but they all seem to think it has something to do with Q’s “dead soulmate.”  They’re all walking on eggshells around him anymore, so why would one of the emotionally-constipated double-oh agents be any different?

Of course, Q and Bond still have to talk when Q equips him for missions.  Mostly Q explains in a clipped, monotone voice whatever new gadget he’s included and Bond grunts when he absolutely must acknowledge that he’s heard. Moneypenny is hovering one day when Bond comes down and she watches their terse interaction through narrowed eyes.

“Oi, James Bond,” she snaps, interrupting Q’s explanation of a pair of night vision sunglasses.

Bond has been standing silently, hands jammed in his pockets, glaring down at the sunglasses in Q’s grip.  Q grimaces, wishing she wouldn’t but incapable of stopping her.

“I don’t know what crawled up your arse and died, double-oh seven,” Moneypenny says, “but Q’s going through quite enough as it is without you treating him like garbage.”

“Oh yes,” Bond says in obviously false surprise.  “I did hear something about that.  Dead soulmate, was it?”

“Double-oh seven –” Moneypenny begins darkly.

“That’s right,” Q interrupts.  “My soulmate’s dead.  Here.”  He shoves the sunglasses in Bond’s direction.

“Well, in that case, I’m very sorry for your loss, Quartermaster,” Bond says, accepting the glasses and tucking them into his breast pocket.

“Thank you,” Q says through clenched teeth.  “The rest of your kit is on the table.  Good luck in Mozambique.”

Bond takes it and leaves in silence.

“I can’t believe the nerve of that man,” Moneypenny says, not bothering to wait until he’s out of earshot.  “What could possibly possess him –”

“It’s fine, Moneypenny,” Q says.  “Just forget it.”

Moneypenny purses her lips in anger but lets the subject drop.

 

\--

 

A mission goes tits up in Austria and three agents lose their lives.  It’s a mess that has Q at MI6 for three days straight with only a few scattered hours of sleep on the break room couch, but it has the added side benefit of distracting everyone from Q’s Dead Soulmate, a subject which has become a staple of Q branch conversation (he’s charitable enough not to call it gossip; it’s mostly softly spoken pity and concern for his well being, which is irritating but at least isn’t half-rumor spread for titillation).  In the aftermath, the mood at HQ is somber, but Q feels some of the tension easing out of his shoulders.  Grief is a disgusting feeling – like having a waterlogged soul – but it fits him much better when he’s grieving for someone else.

 

\--

 

The nature of MI6 isn’t necessarily forward motion, but it is continuous movement.  It’s rather like a water wheel, actually, turning without stopping.  Even when the river floods, the wheel keeps turning, battered by the current but not broken.  No, not a water wheel.  The London Eye.  A big steel circle rotating in London, each car checking to ensure the view’s remained the same.  All those people, shuffled in and a few turns later out again, never the exact same crowd, but the wheel remains the same.  So it spins and, slowly, everyone moves on.

A few weeks after the Austria disaster, once Q has properly shaved and showered and slept, he and Moneypenny have drinks in his flat.  It’s nearly Christmas, so Moneypenny has brought a pile of presents for Q to wrap.

“You always get the paper so crisp and straight,” she argues when he opens the door to see her haul.  “It looks like it was done by a professional.”

“A professional what?” Q asks, even as he opens the door wider to admit her.  “Paper folder?”

“Elf,” Moneypenny merrily provides.  “One of Santa’s.  Look, I’m even paying you.” 

She pulls a bottle of white wine from somewhere out of the pile, now deposited on his dining room table.  She doesn’t bother to watch for Q’s reaction as she moves to put it in his fridge – she knows all his weaknesses by now.

“If anything,” Q says, still irritated but pleased with the wine, “I’m Santa, don’t you think?”

Moneypenny laughs uproariously at that, perhaps trying to picture Q with a beard and a belly.

Q wraps the presents while Moneypenny watches and gives a running commentary on which presents are going to whom.  She’s gotten novelty ties for Tanner and M – Tanner’s is covered in little coffee cups and M’s is a garish print of the Union Jack.  There are presents for all the double-ohs, mostly gag gifts.  Double-oh nine is getting a pocket flower that squirts water, an item which Q had never known actually existed outside vaudeville.  Double-oh one’s gift is a set of golf balls that explode into clouds of smoke when you try to hit them.  Bond, despite being on Moneypenny’s bad side at the moment, is getting a present just like the rest – an Altoids tin that says ‘emergency bowtie’ on the lid and which has a cheap black clip-on inside.  (Q tries not to be amused and mostly fails.)  For a while, Q is worried that he’s going to end up wrapping his own present, but Moneypenny assures him that his will be readily identifiable, as it will be the only one stuffed into a holiday bag.

Once Q is finished, they pull the wine out of the fridge, now chilled, and pour themselves a couple of glasses to enjoy while sprawled out on Q’s enormous body-swallowing sitting room sofa.

“I don’t know why you bother with a bed,” Moneypenny says.

“If I slept on this I’d probably fall in between the cushions and suffocate,” Q tells her, although he’s fallen asleep on it many times and always survived thus far.

They chat for a while, mostly about Moneypenny’s younger sisters who are fourteen year old twins and walking forces of destruction on the level of double-ohs.  They also swap office gossip, which neither of them are above, especially since they have security clearance and therefore access to primary sources.

It’s getting late and they’re getting drunk, having switched from wine to whiskey a while ago, when they find themselves winding back to the topic of soulmates.  Q can’t even blame Moneypenny, because it’s him that brings it up.

“I had a friend in America,” he says abruptly, bottom lip pressed to the rim of his glass so that’s he’s talking more to the amber liquid than to his companion.  “His soulmate died before they’d ever met.  It scared me, but I looked at him more like a circus freak than a cautionary tale, I think.”

“It’s one of those things that happens to other people,” Moneypenny says.

“Hm.” Q pulls the glass away and jostles it a bit so that the ice cubes shake about and resettle.  “I wonder what’s worse – losing something you’ve never had or knowing you’ll never have it in the first place.”

It’s a sign of how drunk he is that he’s being this candid, and he half expects some uncomfortable questions, so he’s surprised when Moneypenny sets her glass down with a heavy thunk and he looks up to see her glaring at him.  She seems properly cross, which is rare, and Q scrambles to reassess what he’s said for offense.

“I don’t mind if you peek at my file,” Moneypenny says icily.  “In fact, I expect it from you.  But don’t fling it in my face like that.  I’m not a circus freak, either.”

Q stares at her.

“You know how much I hate admitting ignorance,” he says slowly, “but I have no idea what you’re talking about right now.”

Moneypenny searches his face for signs of duplicity, and, finding none, sighs and rubs a hand across her face.

“Do you know why I’ve never participated in a mission to Russia?”

“Because, despite what Bond seems to think, the Cold War is over?”

Moneypenny levels him with a look and then reaches up to unbutton the top few buttons of her blouse.  Q watches warily as she pulls the right shoulder aside, baring a smooth patch of skin interrupted only by a black bra strap and a string of bright white letters.  Q hesitates, but Moneypenny looks expectant, so he leans forward and reads: Tatiana Romanova.

“Ah,” Q says.

“She’s a Russian SVR agent.”

“Ah,” he repeats.

“I could have kept it a secret, I guess, but I couldn’t risk it as a field agent,” she says.  “So it’s in my file.  M knew.  Knows.  Both of them, I mean.  And I’ve never been to Russia.”

Q examines the letters on Moneypenny’s shoulder for a long time and then leans away.  Moneypenny covers the mark again and rebuttons her blouse, tugging the hem slightly to adjust it back into place.  The two of them sit in contemplation for a moment, neither looking at the other.  Q watches the ice melting slowly in his glass and thinks how unfair the universe is. 

How much human wreckage is there in the world that he can cross an ocean and find only loss and then cross back and find his own sad reflection sitting on his living room couch?  How can humans be born with a guarantee of devotion and still find ways to strip it from each other, from themselves?  Q has seen and done terrible things in his life.  He’s had terrible things done to him.  But he’d always believed, foolishly, naively, that if he could just find James Bond, that everything would slot itself into place once and for all.  He realizes now that the finding was never the problem in the first place.

“Some people think that soul marks are proof of the existence of God,” he says, breaking the silence.

“The Church of Christ the Marked,” Moneypenny says.  It’s one of the more prominent Christian sects, but there are plenty of other sects and religions with similar theologies.  “What do you think?”

“I don’t know,” he says honestly, leaning forward to set his glass next to Moneypenny’s.  “I feel like I don’t know much of anything any–”

He’s interrupted by Moneypenny tackling him to the ground just before glass from the window shatters loudly over his flat.

“Sniper!” Moneypenny yells.

Q’s stunned, frozen with momentary shock as she drags him out of view of the window.  He notices both of their glasses have toppled over, whiskey spilling onto the hardwood floor.  Distantly, he thinks what a waste it is, he’s been wasting so much good alcohol these days, and then he’s distracted by Moneypenny drawing a gun out of her handbag on the nearby table because of course she does.

Still reeling, he watches her press up against the wall by the window and peek through the large hole in the glass toward the opposite building.  Q shakes sense back into himself and scrambles across the room to the shelf where he’d set his phone down.  As he dials, Moneypenny rears back away from the window and the bookshelf opposite loses several volumes.  He’s swearing loudly into his phone when Tanner picks up.

“Someone just shot a hole through my first edition Asimov, no I am not okay!” he snaps in response to a concerned query from Tanner.

“Priorities, Q!” Moneypenny sings, leaning to look out the window again.  “He’s on the move.  Damn it, they won’t get here in time.  I’m going after him.”

“What?” Q says.  “No, don’t –” But she’s already leapt out his window and onto the fire escape and is scaling down to the street.  He tuts disapprovingly and relays into his phone, “Moneypenny is in pursuit.”

Tanner gives the kind of long suffering sigh reserved for MI6 executives and nannies.

“I’m sending agents your way now,” he says.  “Are you armed?”

“I’ve got a stun gun and some kitchen knives,” Q says.

“It’ll have to do,” Tanner says.  “Lock yourself in the bathroom and wait until backup arrives.  I’ll stay on the line.”

“Right.  Okay.”

Q keeps the phone pressed to his ear as he pulls the knife drawer out of its slot.  He carries it with him to the bathroom, pausing to grab the stun gun from its hiding spot in a decorative vase as well as his laptop and a roll of duct tape out of his bag.  With the bathroom door locked behind him, he sets the knife drawer and laptop in the tub and begins work on something a little bit better than a wooden door. 

Q plugs the sink drain and turns the faucet on high.  As the basin fills, he turns to the toilet and drops several hand towels into it.  Then he climbs into the tub and cranes his arm to flush several times, until the toilet is overflowing.  He flushes a few more times as the sink reaches capacity and water begins cascading down the cabinet to the floor and he tries very hard not to think about the cost of fixing the water damage.  MI6 is going to make him move after this, anyway, so at least it won’t be him that has to live with it.

“ETA is ten minutes,” Tanner says in his ear, sounding strained.  “I’ve got eyes on your flat and it looks clear.”

“What about Moneypenny?” Q asks as he opens his laptop.

“I see her, too.  She’s pulled a Bond.”

“I dread to ask what that means.”

“She’s stolen a motorcycle.”

“That’s not so bad.”

“Off the back of a lorry going sixty.”

“I stand corrected.”

It’s a matter of moments before Q is connected to MI6 and he makes quick work of pulling up the CCTV that Tanner is monitoring.  He gives a cursory glance to Moneypenny, in the midst of pursing a black van (typical) at a speed usually reserved for race tracks and teenagers, and then turns to the footage of the street outside his flat.  He’s just in time to see a second black van pull up to the curb and three burly looking men with guns pile out of the back.

“You’ve got company,” Tanner says.

“Yes, I see that,” Q says in a tight I’m-not-panicking-you’re-panicking voice.

“ETA is seven minutes.”

Q does a quick mental calculation and winces.

Don’t think too hard about it, he instructs himself, and turns the stun gun on.  With the electricity live, he wraps the duct tape around the handle and the switch, tight enough to keep it on, tearing the duct tape off the roll with his teeth.  He hears his flat door smash open and flattens down into the tub basin near the faucet, careful not to accidentally electrocute himself in the process.

The sound of running water (as well as the pool seeping under the bathroom door) alerts the intruders to his location fairly quickly.  They break down the door with only a few blows, but Q waits for the sound of feet splashing before he lobs the stun gun over the edge of the tub into the water.  The resulting sound of a body falling and loud swearing (distinctly English, he notes) is truly satisfying.

His victory is short lived, however, because a moment later a gun goes off and he is showered in pieces of porcelain tub.  He throws his hands over the back of his neck and presses down into the tub as far as he can.  Another two shots ring out, one hitting the title just above his head.  Q grabs one of the kitchen knives and is weighing the pros and cons of testing his frankly horrible aim when several more shots ring out, this time accompanied by the sound of shouting and thudding and not by further destruction to his bathroom.  Q glances up at his laptop and sees a familiar car is now parked behind the black van.

The gun shots stop and the sounds of fighting cease.  Silence and the sound of running water become dominant once more.  Q keeps hold of the knife just in case and then slowly pushes himself up to look over the ruined tub edge.  Three unfamiliar men are lying face down in the door way, the still growing pool of water tinged pink with blood.   James Bond stands over them, looking grim.

“I don’t suppose you had an exit strategy in mind,” he says, gesturing to the still live stun gun half submerged in Q’s new en suite swimming pool.

“I hadn’t thought that far ahead, no,” Q says.  To Tanner, he says, “Double-oh seven is here.”

“Bond?” Tanner says in surprise.  “What the hell is he doing in London?  He’s supposed to be in Amsterdam.”

“Thank you for saving my life,” Q says to Bond, “but Tanner tells me you’re meant to be in Amsterdam.  Which makes your fortuitous arrival just the slightest bit alarming.”

“Change of plans,” Bond says.  “You and I need to have a chat.”

 

\--

 

Q ends up using the bodies of his attackers and several pillows and couch cushions as a bridge from the tub to dry hardwood floor.  He turns off the faucet along the way, giving a thought to the two women who live in the flat below him.  Before he has a chance to argue, Bond takes the phone from him and hangs up on Tanner.  Q lets out a sound of protest, but manages little more than to keep hold of his laptop as Bond drags him out of the flat and down the stairs.

“I suppose you realize this is highly irregular,” Q says as Bond pushes him into the Aston Martin’s passenger seat.

“You’ll recall that I have precedent,” Bond says, and Q snorts as the car door slams shut.

Q waits until Bond has gotten into the driver’s seat and then says, “Are you planning to explain why you’re here kidnapping me and not in Amsterdam doing your job?”

Bond glances at him, expression grim.

“The Amsterdam mission has proven difficult to complete.”  His hands flex around the steering wheel as he pulls out onto the street.  “I’ve been spending most of my time dodging bullets, and not the ones I was expecting to have to dodge, either.  Three different hitmen have come after me in the past week and two Interpol agents on top of that.”  He turns his eyes from the road to glare at Q, just long enough to make Q nervous about traffic, and he realizes suddenly that Bond is angry.  “They seemed to believe I was some kind of dangerous international terrorist.  They had a lovely little dossier with my face in it.  Apparently I dabble in child prostitution on the side.”

“Christ,” Q says.  “I need to get back to MI6.”

“No,” Bond says.  “Right now you need to tell me who knows about your soul mark.”

Tonight is turning out to be a banner night for two of Q’s least favorite things: being in mortal peril and not understanding things other people clearly expect him to understand.  He’s not sure which sensation is worse.

“The dossier was thorough,” Bond says in response to Q’s blank expression.  “It contained information that only exists in the MI6 databases, including the address of my Amsterdam bolt hole and all my MI6 issued credit cards.  That leaves two possibilities: One, someone hacked into our systems, which sounds incredibly unlikely given that Silva was the only one to ever manage it and he started out on the inside.  Two, MI6 has a mole.  In the case of the former, you’re the only one I know who is capable of tracking the hacker down.  In the case of the latter, you become either the least or most likely person to want me dead.”

“Why the hell would I want you dead?” Q interrupts, irritated at being suspected.

Bond glances at him with a flicker of something that looks dangerously like fondness.  Q forces himself not to analyze it too closely.

“In all three cases, I needed to get to you while you were on your own,” Bond continues without answering.  “That’s why I arrived when I did – I was already on my way.”

“I’m still not sure what any of this has to do with my soul mark.”

“You and I have both been attacked with lethal force, and while coincidences have been known to occur from time to time, I find that they usually happen to people who aren’t spies.  Best case scenario, our leak at MI6 just decided it’d be better if the Quartermaster was out of their way.”

“I don’t think that can be considered a best case scenario in any context,” Q points out.

“Worst case scenario,” Bond continues, ignoring him, “someone knows we’re soulmates and is targeting us both deliberately.  I’d like to know how that’s possible.”

Q closes his eyes and leans back against the headrest.

 “Where are we going?” he asks.

“Q,” Bond says.  “The mark.  Who knows?”

“I’m not an idiot,” Q snaps.  “I don’t tell anyone who asks.  And even when I was freelance, I never sought out help finding you or told anyone I was looking.  It would have been like asking for help with a puzzle – not as satisfying to solve if you haven’t done it on your own.”

“But you did tell someone.  Who?”

“What about when you had your mark removed?” Q counters.  “The doctor who did the injections would have to have seen it.”

“I did it myself,” Bond says, and it says a lot about him that it’s not the most ridiculous, unsafe, paranoid thing Q has ever heard.  “Who did you tell?”

“There’s only one,” Q says.  “But he can’t be –”

“He is.”

Q shakes his head.

“There has to be someone else,” he says, trying to sort out his jumbled thoughts.  “Someone who noticed the timing of my move back to London or –”

“Occam’s razor,” Bond says, as though using it like a butcher’s knife to carve off cheap meat.  “Who did you tell?  Don’t make me ask again.”

Q swallows.

“He’s CIA,” he says.  “His name’s Fred Clay.”

 

\--

 

They stop at a moderately priced hotel, which Q supposes is Bond’s version of slumming it.  They get looks from the concierge, and Q assumes it’s a combined result of Bond paying in a wad of cash and Q not having had time to put on shoes before being forced from his flat.  In the hotel room, Q happens to glance in the mirror screwed into the back of the door and realizes he looks even more a fright than he’d imagined.  With his clothes rumpled and bits of white porcelain in his hair as well as a sheen of dust badly wiped from his glasses, he looks like someone who’s just escaped the proverbial bull in a china shop.  Bond’s fierce expression and impeccable looks make the overall picture they present neither more coherent nor less suspicious.

“We’ll be lucky if she hasn’t already phoned the police,” Q says, running a hand through hair to get some of the debris out.

“I tipped her handsomely,” Bond says.

Q sighs but drops down onto the edge of one of the beds and opens his laptop.

“Alright,” Q says, rolling his shoulders, “I’m going to be hacking into both the CIA and MI6 simultaneously, so if there’s anything else you’d like to tell me, now would be the time to do it.”

“Why do you need to hack into MI6?”

“Well, when I say hack, I really mean something a lot different, but I kept it simple for your sake,” Q says.  “The problem with just logging in is that it’s basically the equivalent of banging the door open and saying, ‘Hello, everyone!  It’s Q!  Here I am!  And here are my exact coordinates!’  I had assumed, based on our quick exit and your conclusions about MI6 security, that that’s something we’d like to avoid doing, if at all possible.”

Bond scowls at Q’s tone but keeps any comments to himself, electing instead to sit down on one of the wooden chairs by the small round table with a stack of take out menus on top of it and check his gun and stock of bullets.  At first Q finds his presence uncomfortable, particularly the heavy gaze that he feels infrequently leveled on the side of his face, but he soon finds himself slipping into full concentration, the world and Bond melting away to be replaced by pure code and the feeling of the keyboard under his fingertips.  He makes quick work of MI6 – it’s his own system, after all – and slips into the CIA not long after, but remains on alert.  Q has worked with all the people he’s hiding from, after all, and he knows better than anyone not to underestimate them.

Clay’s files aren’t particularly high clearance, although a few of his projects are.  They’re also tempting and distracting and Q has to force himself not to pull up the blueprints for something labeled ‘Sonic Screwdriver :)’ that’s under so many levels of security it could give Fort Knox a run for its money (possibly literally, given that name).  He skims the information on Clay for anything out of the ordinary, but nothing strikes him as particularly suspicious.  As far as the CIA seems to be aware, Clay is right where Q left him all that time ago.  It’s a little nostalgic.

He uses Clay’s CIA file as a springboard into the rest of his life, looking up credit card usage, phone records, bank statements, and doctor’s visits.  There’s nothing to indicate malicious activity there either, and not even in a suspicious ‘hasn’t had a parking ticket ever’ sort of way either – Clay’s making regular calls to something Q identifies as a sex phone line and appears to have stopped buying alcohol completely (he was always a bit of a lush when Q knew him).  It’s the hospital records that are most revealing, and Q finds his heart sinking as he skims through them.

“Oh, Clay,” he breathes and reaches up to take his glasses off and rub his eyes.

He feels like a class-a prick digging through all this. 

Q pulls up the sex phone line and starts background searches on all its employees, just to be safe, then sits back for a moment to stare up from the computer screen toward the opposite wall.  He can see his own dim reflection in the black television screen, blurred without his glasses, but clear enough that he can see that his own face is tired and drawn.  What a night.  He suddenly feels much, much older than he actually is.

“Find something you don’t like?” Bond asks.

Q jumps slightly, having nearly forgotten he was there.  He clears his throat and puts his glasses back on.

“Nothing relevant,” he says, as the last of the sex phone line employees comes up as a dead end.  He pauses and then adds, “He has cancer.  The outlook isn’t optimistic.”

Bond says nothing.

“I ought to have kept in touch with him,” Q says, mostly to himself.  “He’s all on his own.  I didn’t even think about it when I left, I was so self-absorbed.  I suppose it’d be strange if I tried to get in contact with him now, though.”

“What about his soulmate?” Bond asks.

“She died.”

“Just like yours, then.”

Q pauses and turns to look at Bond.  His expression is as inscrutable as always.  He finishes reassembling his gun for what’s probably the sixth or seventh time (Q hasn’t been paying attention in the least) and sets it down on the table next to him before raising his eyes to meet Q’s gaze.  Q can’t help but feel like he’s being accused of something.

“I’m sorry, is there a problem?” he asks peevishly.  “If you’re displeased with the situation, you only have yourself to blame.”

“How does a CIA agent know about your soul mark?” Bond asks instead of giving a proper reply.

Q scowls.

“Because it’s on my inner thigh,” he says, enunciating clearly so there can be no mistake, “and we had sex.  Frequently.”

A muscle in Bond’s jaw jumps and Q sees red.

“No,” he snaps.  “You don’t get to do this, not after everything else.”  He stands up and crosses the room to Bond.  “You want to say something?  Go ahead, double-oh seven.  Go ahead, you complete, fucking hypocrite.”

“You’re mistaken, Q,” Bond says shortly.

“That’s not my name, James Bond, and you know it,” Q says.  “Do you remember what it is?  Do you remember what it looked like on your skin, you giant, fucking bastard?”

Bond looks away, maybe out of shame, but more likely, based on his expression, because he’s on the verge of breaking something and is having to remind himself that Q is a necessary evil.

“How long did you wait to get rid of it?” Q asks, aware that his voice is steadily raising in volume but not quite sure how to stop.  “The day it appeared?  When you became a double-oh?  Or did you wait until you knew who I was and you were sure you didn’t want me?  Because that’s what you said, Bond!  Have you forgotten that too?  I can repeat it for you, if you like, because _I remember with perfect clarity_ –”

A small beeping sound from his laptop interrupts him.  Q rears back, and then deflates as he turns to look at the results of his scan of MI6.  There’s no point in being angry at Bond when it comes to anything, least of all matters of sentiment.  Unstoppable force, meet immovable object.  He glances at his laptop, still partly distracted, and then freezes.

“Oh,” he says.  “Oh, that’s…”

He sees Bond sitting up straighter out of the corner of his eye.

“Someone’s been in here that ought not to have been,” Q says.  “This is elegant, extremely elegant, but I recognize the style – it’s from another hacker I used to work with before I worked for the CIA.  But when did she…?  And why didn’t I notice?”  He stares at the screen for a long moment, and then his head snaps up as a thought occurs to him.  “Austria.  I was focused on that disaster; we all were.  And then…”  Q looks at Bond.  “My style has changed immensely since I knew her, but she must have realized it was me.  She knew I was Q and she knew I’d spot her given the chance.  So when you left Amsterdam and headed straight for me –”

“– she had to make sure you didn’t get one,” Bond says, catching on.

“This isn’t about us being soulmates at all,” Q concludes.  “So what the hell does she want with you?”

“Can you track her?” Bond asks.

“I’m not sure,” Q admits.  “It’d be easier if we went back to MI6.”

“No, not yet,” Bond says.  “If you’re right, she either orchestrated a mission failure or knew right when it happened and MI6 was at its most vulnerable.  That sounds like she had inside help.”

Q sighs.

“At least let me phone Moneypenny,” Q says.  “We can have her look into it.  If there’s anyone we can trust, it’s her.”

Bond looks doubtful.

“Oh, for god’s sakes,” Q says.  “She was just alone in my flat with me for several hours.  If she was working for someone who wanted me dead, she had plenty of opportunity to do it herself.”

“Fine,” Bond says, pulling out Q’s phone and handing it to him.  “But only her.”

Q grabs the phone, careful not to brush Bond’s hand in the process (he feels childish doing so but he really doesn’t think he can stand touching Bond at the moment), and dials Moneypenny.  She picks up on the first ring.  Not on the motorcycle anymore, then, although a glance at the clock tells him it would be ridiculous to expect that she would be.

“Don’t say my name; don’t react to what I’m about to tell you,” Q says before she can speak.  “It’s likely that MI6 has a mole.  They’re working for a hacker who may be going by the handle Procyon, and she’s after Bond.  That’s all I can tell you for now.  Bond and I are safe but we won’t be coming in for a while.”

The line disconnects.

Q puzzles over that for only a moment – usually she’s very good about faking interested conversation (particularly with men) – before his phone vibrates with a new text from Moneypenny.  It’s a link to a Twitter account.

“Ah,” he says.

Kelly B (@ItsKellyB): the WEIRDEST blokes came in while i was working 2nite??? tipped good tho *ok hand* *ok hand* *party popper* *money bag*

There’s a blurry photo of Q and Bond attached, backs to Kelly B’s phone as they wait for the elevator in the hotel lobby.  Q’s bare feet and white-dusted hair stand out in particular.  The time stamp is from half an hour ago.

Bond makes a sound of frustration from over Q’s shoulder.

“I hate social media,” he says.

“You know, I don’t think she really understands the concept of a bribe,” Q says as he closes the laptop and tucks it under his arm.

“Kids these days,” Bond says, returning his gun to his holster and pulling his jacket back on.  “Your generation is a lost cause.”

 

\--

 

They barely make it to the car park.

 

\--

 

They’re at a disadvantage from the beginning, of course.  Q is not a field agent.  He has almost no self-defense training, can barely hit a target with his own guns, and is rendered more or less useless the moment anyone thinks to snatch his glasses off his face.  At least, he reasons as a fist connects with his stomach and the barrel of a gun presses against his temple, his death won’t knock Bond out the way it would have if their bond was intact.  It’s the first time he’s been glad of it and, the way things are looking at the moment, probably the last.

Not far off, but far enough that the details are lost in a fuzz of color and movement, Q can see Bond still struggling against his attackers.  He’s shot several of them, but lost his gun to a well placed punch that sent it clattering across the cement to rest underneath one of the parked cars.  But Bond is putting up a hell of a fight, as he always does, and Q believes for the briefest of moments that one of them is going to get out of this alive.

Then the man who has Q’s wrists now in a vice-like grip yells, “Stop or I’ll shoot him!”

Q can’t see Bond’s face.  He squints through the soft morning light – it’s just past dawn now – but only sees the smudged square that hovers over Bond’s shoulders, stilling now as it turns to face Q and his captor.  And he is stilling, his chest heaving and his arms raising, slowly, but not with clenched fists.

“What are you doing?” Q wheezes, still winded.  He takes a deep breath.  “Get the hell –” But then the butt of the gun collides with the side of his head and everything tilts, shatters into pinpricks of light, and then finally goes dark.

 

\--

 

Q wakes up tied to a metal chair.

His head is throbbing and he can feel dried blood caked to his temple, itchy but warm, and he counts it as a small blessing that he hasn’t gathered more injuries while he was out.  Slowly, he lifts his head, still dizzy – he can only hope he doesn’t have a concussion – and looks around the room.  Someone has replaced his glasses on his face, though they’re skewed slightly and the left lens has a crack in it.  He doesn’t know what to make of this gesture, so he ignores it.

Instead, his eyes fix on Bond, who is sitting tied to a chair next to Q, stripped down to his pants and looking cold.  Q’s mind is still jogging to catch up, so he has to look down at himself and see his trousers and cardigan intact before he realizes the disparity between their states of dress.

Besides the clothes, it’s obvious that Bond has taken a beating, perhaps in the car park, but maybe also while Q was out.  His face – turned toward Q and pinched with concern – is swollen and bruised, blood trickling down his face.  It looks like his cheek bone might be broken, and definitely his nose, which has left long tracks of blood over his lips and down his chin.  His chest has already started bruising deep purple in places, particularly around the right side of his rib cage.  Q can’t see the left side, but he sincerely hopes it’s a healthier shade.

“Alrigh’ there, Q?” Bond asks, his speech thick and slightly slurred.  His Scottish brogue is more prominent than usual.

“Fine,” Q says.  He thinks about asking Bond the same, but there’s not much of a point.  “I’m fine.”

He twists his neck and looks around the room.  Other than the two of them, there’s not much to speak of – gray cement walls, ceiling, and floor (with a water drain in it – not a promising sign), plus a single light bulb hanging overhead in a metal cage.  He turns as far as he can to look over his shoulder and sees a thick steel door with a small slat for a window near the top.

“Where are we?” he asks.          

“Somewhere in England, but I’m no’ sure,” Bond says.  “I wasn’ conscious for much of it.”

“You’re an idiot,” Q says as he regains his orientation.  “You should’ve run and left me.”

“If I ‘ad, you’d be dead.”

“They still might kill me, and you’re not much help strapped to a chair in nothing but your pants,” Q says.  “Besides, it was you they were after in the first place.”  He sighs as he remembers the scene in the car park.  “I hope someone thinks to retrieve your gun.”

Bond actually laughs at that, just a short burst that must be hell on his chest and face, but enough that Q swings his head around to look at him.  He has a stupid half-grin stretching across his intact cheek, eyes crinkled so the crow’s feet are showing.

“It’s an expensive gun, Bond,” Q says, although he feels his own mouth twitching in return.  “Something you seem to enjoy forgetting.”

“I remember,” Bond says.  “They don’ pop out of an easy bake oven.”

Q snorts in surprise.  “You actually do remember.  I can’t believe it.”

Bond hums by way of reply.

They sit in strangely companionable silence for a moment, Q practically vibrating with questions.  He knows all he has to say is, “Sit Rep, double-oh seven,” but he doesn’t want Bond to aggravate his injuries speaking.  But sitting in ignorant silence has never been one of Q’s fortes.  It’s not long before he gives in and asks, “Any idea why we’re here?”

“It’s starting to make some sense, yes,” he says, then hesitates.  “Q.  Look at me for a momen’.”

Q turns away from his examination of the light’s wiring – a metal tube running through a hole high in the corner of the far wall – and warily meets Bond’s eyes.

“Algiers,” Bond says.  “The phone.”

Q blinks, but nods slowly.  “The one you blew up.”

“Yes,” Bond says.  “I’m sorry.”

“For blowing up the phone,” Q says blankly.  “Fine.  Apology accepted.  I got what I needed, anyway.”  He squints at Bond suspiciously.  “Which you know.”

Bond rolls his eyes in exasperation.

“You’re impossible,” he says.  “The room is bugged.  Aren’ you suppose’ to be a genius?”

Q’s eyebrows shoot into his hairline as he suddenly understands that Bond is trying to tell him something.

“Right,” he says, clearing his throat.  “The phone.  In Algiers.  Which you are very sorry for.”

Bond levels him with an unimpressed look and opens his mouth to say something, but at that moment the door behind them opens with the echoing sound of metal scraping across cement.  Q breaks eye contact with Bond to look toward the doorway and sees a tall, dark-haired woman around Bond’s age enter the room, accompanied by two men in black fatigues carrying automatics.  One of the men stays by the door as it shuts behind them and the other follows the woman as she comes around to stand in front of Q and Bond.  She crosses her arms over her maroon blouse and stares down at them.

“I don’t believe we’ve ever met in person,” she says to Q in an American accent.  “But we have met.”

“Procyon,” Q says, putting two and two together.

“And you’re Hyde,” she says.  “Or were.  It’s Q now, I guess.”

“I haven’t been called Hyde in a long time, no.”

“Not since you sold out all your friends to the CIA,” Procyon says.  “You’re lucky they didn’t catch me, or I’d be just the littlest bit angry.”

“You’ve already tried to have me killed,” Q points out.  “That doesn’t really seem like water under the bridge.”

Procyon shrugs, uncrossing her arms to glance down at a thin silver watch on her left wrist.

“Believe what you want,” she says.  “You don’t really matter all that much to me, in the grand scheme of things.  But for now you have a use.”  She turns her gaze on Bond and raises a single eyebrow.  “You, on the other hand, mean a great deal.”

“Flattery will get you everywhere,” Bond says.

Q rolls his eyes.  Flirting is as second nature to Bond as breathing at this point.  It’s like a defense mechanism.

“Then I’ll ask once more, very nicely,” Procyon says.  “Where is your soul mark, darling?”

Q resists the urge to turn his head to look at Bond and forces his body to stay still.  His skin is itching with tension, particularly around his thigh, and underneath his still throbbing skull his thoughts are running into and over each other like the cars on a crashed train.

“I don’ have one,” Bond says.

“That’s fine,” Procyon says, as though she hadn’t really expected anything else.  “I was only being polite.” 

She turns to the guard and holds out her hand.  The guard reaches a hand into one of the pockets on his jacket and pulls out a small, box-shaped device, a bottle of what looks like rubbing alcohol, and a cloth.  Procyon takes the items and turns the black phone-like object on with the press of a button.  The screen lights up, illuminating her thin nose and square jaw, and she points the front end toward Bond.

“I didn’t think of it right away,” she says, “but when I did I felt like a moron.  It’s not exactly public knowledge – much more palatable to just call it hormone therapy – but that shit you’ve been injecting into your skin leaves a trace.  Some of the lab coats call it chemo for lovers.  Because that’s what it is, you understand.  Deliberately isolating and killing your body’s cells.”  She glances up at Q, who must look shocked, because she smiles slightly and says, “Oh, don’t worry.  It’s not enough to hurt anyone.”  She pauses and looks bemused for a moment.  “Well, it might be in this case, actually.  You’re not supposed to do it more than once, after all.”

She lowers the device – some kind of handheld medical scanner that can detect invisible tissue scarring, Q realizes now, and at any other time he would find its existence distracting – until it’s only a few inches from Bond’s skin and sweeps it slowly over him.  It doesn’t take long for her to stop just above Bond’s left pectoral.

“Right over the heart,” she says.  “How sweet.” 

Procyon hands the device back to the guard and opens the bottle of rubbing alcohol.  She pours a little bit onto the cloth and then reaches forward to dab roughly at the spot on Bond’s chest, ignoring the way his head has reared back and his nostrils have flared in anger.  She continues like this for a while, eyes narrowed in concentration, and then her hand falters slightly.  Q can’t see what’s on Bond’s skin, but he hears Procyon let out a quiet little gasp.  Her eyes light up and she smiles in obvious delight.

“There it is,” she says reverently.  “The impossible soul mark.  I almost didn’t dare to hope…”

She seems to remember herself after a moment because she clears her throat and straightens up, screwing the lid back on the rubbing alcohol and handing it and the cloth back to the guard.

“Jude Wildeve,” she reads aloud.  “An exceptional name for an exceptional mark.  I almost wish I could meet him.”

You already have, Q thinks hysterically, and he’d very much like to know what the hell is going on.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wasn't going to post this until tomorrow when I'd had a chance to sleep and then read it over again but I'm too excited! I will definitely regret this in the morning!
> 
> This chapter mainly took a long time to write because I was on vacation over the past month and I only work well under pressure. The first part was written entirely during my finals week last semester and the first 6k draft was done in one sitting from probably six or seven pm until five am two days before I had two major papers due, neither of which I had started. (I did finish them on time, if you're worried.) But I go back to school tomorrow so hopefully I'll update faster.
> 
> Points if you recognized Moneypenny's soulmate, Tatiana Romanova, from From Russia with Love. I'm thinking about doing a short (but that's what I said about this!) thing about it once PotS has finished. Q's name, Jude Wildeve, is a Frankenstein-esque amalgamation of names from Thomas Hardy novels, which you don't get points for having recognized, only my condolences.
> 
> I now have a James Bond-themed tumblr where I also post about my fics, mainly in the form of daily progress logs, so feel free to follow if you're interested @ [double-ohs](http://www.double-ohs.tumblr.com). Please harass me. Or just talk to me about Bond. I have a lot of opinions, mainly to do with my disbelief that Roger Moore was allowed to make so many movies.


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